“We could not doubt it,” said the duchess, smiling confidently. “The proposed union offers you too many advantages to be rejected.”
“Enumerate them, I pray you?” said Bourbon. “First, then, the marriage will amicably settle the process between us, and will operate like a decree in your favour, for you will retain your possessions. Next, I shall bring you a royal dowry. As my husband, you will be second only in authority to the king. Nay, you will have greater power than he. You will find Louise de Savoi a very different wife from Suzanne de Bourbon. I will enrich you—I will augment your power—I will aggrandise you. You shall be king—all but in name.”
“I doubt not your power to accomplish all this, madame,” rejoined Bourbon. “I know your unbounded influence over your son. I know you have filled your coffers from the royal treasures—as was proved by the confession of the wretched Semblençay, who gave you the five million ducats he ought to have sent to Italy, and who paid the penalty of his folly with his life. I know that in effect you have already despoiled me of my possessions—
“Dwell on these matters no longer, Charles,” she interrupted. “Forget the past, and look forward to a brilliant future. My offer is accepted?—speak!”
“You deem me so much abased that I must needs accept it, madame,” said Bourbon. “But I am not yet fallen so low. I reject it—scornfully reject it.”
“Reflect, Charles—reflect before you come to this fatal determination, for fatal it will be to you,” she cried. “You are ruined—irretrievably ruined—if you wed me not.”
“I would sooner be degraded from my rank—I would sooner mount the scaffold, than wed you, Louise de Savoie, my some time mistress, but now my bitter enemy,” said the Constable, fiercely.
“Bourbon, I swear to you I am not your enemy,” cried the duchess. “Do not regard me with scorn and hate. Look at me as a loving woman. My heart—my soul is yours. Since you will not stoop to me, I will do what I never yet did to man—I will kneel to you.”
And she threw herself before him, and clasped his hands.
“Forgive me, Charles!” she cried, in half suffocated accents. “Forgive me for the great love I have ever borne you.”